According to Wikipedia the module Die Vecna Die! was the three campaign spanning module that sort of was used to explain the changes made between 2nd edition. Like how any race can be any class (that's what I figure would be the most noticeable difference in the fluff at least. I mean its not like a human fighter looks at his friend and says "Hey I think my Armor Class is now 20 instead of -10.") I think perhaps either using Die Vecna Die as sort of a major world changing catalyst or perhaps a piece of fanon to explain how wildspace has changed.

The first idea I had comes from the sort of dislike of our first Hotel California IN SPAAAACCCEEEE, The Spelljammer. Perhaps the Fool really succeeded and destroying the flying manta ray in such a manner (used a mythal, used some doom magic, summoned Vecna by accident.) A new one does grow up but the magical explosion is the major change.

Or another thought the Astromundi Cluster. If I kind of recall weren't the Arcane trying to make a weapon to blow that up? I don't have the box set on that one yet.

I wanted to get all of our 3rd edition SJ fans to sort of explore this idea and perhaps the change in racials, if any. I do recall and agreeing that dwarves could probably construct or use different ships over cumbersome forge ships as they now can have wizards in their ranks.

Last edited by BoddynockStotch on Mon Dec 28, 2009 4:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

BoddynockStotch wrote:To take a step back from C&C and to my other favorite system 3.5/Pathfinder (That's the next book I plan to get sooner or later.) I had sort of an interesting thought we could perhaps apply to 3rd edition Spelljammer.

According to Wikipedia the module Die Vecna Die! was the three campaign spanning module that sort of was used to explain the changes made between 2nd edition. Like how any race can be any class (that's what I figure would be the most noticeable difference in the fluff at least. I mean its not like a human fighter looks at his friend and says "Hey I think my Armor Class is now 20 instead of -10.") I think perhaps either using Die Vecna Die as sort of a major world changing catalyst or perhaps a piece of fanon to explain how wildspace has changed.

That is interesting. I never heard that about Die Vecna Die!

I suspect that there will be some changes that we would want to ignore (i.e. pretend they were always like that) and other things that it would be fun to deal with (i.e. the new sorcerer class).

A less obvious change is the alteration in spellcasting for the minor spellcasting classes. I would now treat a PCs "spelljamming level" as being identical to his "spellcasting level" (i.e. if his spellcasting level is half his class level, I'd treat him as a cleric of half his level). And for multi-class spellcasters, I would add up all the spellcasting levels to get the total spelljamming level.

BoddynockStotch wrote:The first idea I had comes from the sort of dislike of our first Hotel California IN SPAAAACCCEEEE, The Spelljammer. Perhaps the Fool really succeeded and destroying the flying manta ray in such a manner (used a mythal, used some doom magic, summoned Vecna by accident.) A new one does grow up but the magical explosion is the major change.

Actually, the novel The Ultimate Helm deals with The Spelljammer (or should I say "Creannon" as the Cloakmaster Cycle novels reveal that every version of The Spelljammer* has its own name).

* = As we know that a random smalljammer grows to replace The Spelljammer, I would argue that all smalljammers have names.

It is possible your idea could be used to "move the timeline on" but I would say that Vecna would not be any part of the changes, as the events happen in The Broken Sphere (Ouiyan) during the Second Unhuman War.

So if we were to go with this sort of idea, that would move the campaign forward to a time when the scro were a known threat (rather than a secret race) and it was known that planets like Spiral had been invaded.

I don't know which smalljammer would grow into the new version of The Spelljammer, but we do know that a single smalljammer was grown and launched just before the destruction of Creannon, so that one might be the one that grows into the big ship. Whatever, happens, we would actually have a mostly empty ship, with no Fool and plenty of space for people to land and claim territory.

BoddynockStotch wrote:Or another thought the Astromundi Cluster. If I kind of recall weren't the Arcane trying to make a weapon to blow that up? I don't have the box set on that one yet.

Not quite. They were trying to make an artifact that would allow them to sell the sphere to a bunch of evil outsiders. But with the Astromundi Cluster being mostly cut off from the rest of the SJ universe, changes there would not be important...

...unless the sphere was opened up.

There was talk (in Lords of Madness) of Astromundi being the homeworld of the illithid race, so that is something that might need to be dealt with. Apparantly, time travel was involved, so perhaps the entire race could be sent back in time by someone (or something). This could make the illithids vanish from Clusterspace but arrive in the past to become the threat they are to all campaign settings and all spheres.

BoddynockStotch wrote:I wanted to get all of our 3rd edition SJ fans to sort of explore this idea and perhaps the change in racials, if any. I do recall and agreeing that dwarves could probably construct or use different ships over cumbersome forge ships as they now can have wizards in their ranks.

Dwarves should always have had clerics anyway. After all, they have always had gods.

I think we need to have two types of dwarves. Ones that use forges to move ships and ones that use conventional human-like ships to go from sphere to sphere. We also need a method to take a Citadel from sphere to sphere.

I suspect that an advancement in the timeline would have to be accompanied with a lot of tying up of loose ends in existing crystal spheres. This might result in the original adventure modules being "done" and a GM needing to write "sequels".

Big Mac wrote:That is interesting. I never heard that about Die Vecna Die!

I suspect that there will be some changes that we would want to ignore (i.e. pretend they were always like that) and other things that it would be fun to deal with (i.e. the new sorcerer class).

A less obvious change is the alteration in spellcasting for the minor spellcasting classes. I would now treat a PCs "spelljamming level" as being identical to his "spellcasting level" (i.e. if his spellcasting level is half his class level, I'd treat him as a cleric of half his level). And for multi-class spellcasters, I would add up all the spellcasting levels to get the total spelljamming level.

This adventure, and Vecna's multiverse-shattering plan contained within it, have been used by some D&D fans as an in-game explanation of the differences between the 2nd and 3rd editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

Granted the words used were some D&D fans, but the idea of killing Vecna (he is a lich in the 3.5 book of course.) Is a neat idea. But onto the main part!
Early last year I actually ran a Pathfinder-Spelljammer thing and that is exactly what I did. On a major helm the PC used at his level, I actually let either arcane or divine caster use a major helm at their spellcasting level (though perhaps in this slight move forward there are Major Helms "Arcane" and Major Helms "Divine" that are compatible to certain types of magic.)

Lifejammer drained a level each hour (might change the time, but I think of it like draining a battery, in this case a person.) But the ship's SR was at the characters level/HD

The illithid helms I think are good as written and I have to re-read how a forge helm gets its spelljamming rating again.

As for changes we want to ignore, I think they might change a certain dynamic of wildspace. I'll give you a for instance based off my favorite race; gnomes. Reading the Spacefarer and my own partial knowledge (mainly from 3rd edition FRCS and Greyhawk) the gnomes of Lantan and gnomes of Oerth. The Lantanese gnomes were, as a whole, stuck on Faerun. With only clerics (and I guess illusionists, few and far in between.) The slightly better inventors only occasionally went into space as part of an adventuring party, same goes for the Oerth bunch who being earthly creatures despised living the coldness of space (also because again lacking any real class to get them there.)

So it sort of left those crazy Krynn gnomes for every race to despise and make a few jokes (okay a lot of jokes : ).) With a third edition not only we these other gnomes get into space but perhaps as the time line moves forward they might change the way we see wildspace gnomes. Colonies could be a strange mix of hill burrows, slapdash minoi workshops and sensible Lantanese houses (not going to add Eberron but I can only imagine what that group would do.) And that's just one race example.

Also I was just kidding about The Fool summoning Vecna, though the events in Die Vecna Die! Could explain the changes in the Oerth Sphere. Granted that is kind of the thing about crystal spheres. Different gods have different levels of power in different spheres, where one god flourishes another god not so much. So thus in Oerth, Vecna's big world changing scheme of power could offset things in Greyspace but do nothing to Realmspace.

Sorry about jumping tangent on a muse train of thought. I am curious Big Mac or anyone with the degrees of Realm Lore. In 3rd edition book how big is the jump between 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms and 3rd Edition? I own the FRCS but I wasn't sure if there was an event or, say, a five year jump for the 3rd edition FRCS. This could be a good start of how far we could jump the start date of 3rd edition Spelljammer and some events that might have happened.

BoddynockStotch wrote:In 3rd edition book how big is the jump between 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms and 3rd Edition?

There really wasn't much of a jump at all, since TSR/WotC continued to publish Realms novels even through the transition from 2E to 3E, and most of them progressed the timeline. The 3E FRCS has 1372 DR as its starting year, and the last "2E" novel to be published, as far as I can recall, was set in 1371 DR (the Cormyr trilogy).

Game mechanics-wise, I'm not sure what the last 2E product was (I want to say it was Cloak and Dagger, which was- IIRC- light on the mechanics anyway), but the Realms timeline was set somewhere around 1370 DR by the time of the publication of The North, which was published in 1996.

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I checked around the FRCS and Lost Empires of Faerun. Even a couple of sites that reportedly have the timeline. The 3rd edition current year is called "The Year of Wild Magic." That's kind of neat title, though I'm now curious. What was The Symbols class in 2nd edition era? She's a 20th level sorceress in the 3rd edition book but was she a wild mage or a wizard?

So I guess the Realms doesn't offer as much, but the other campaign settings might. Then again perhaps Big Mac was on the mark about sort of just letting certain things go without detailed explanations. I would like to see some ideas of perhaps the few year jump would bring to Wildspace? Like does the Vodoni Empire really fall? Or perhaps the adventurers did loose or didn't necessarily break the back of the evil empire, but like Iuz, forced their hand to sign a truce.

BoddynockStotch wrote:So I guess the Realms doesn't offer as much, but the other campaign settings might. Then again perhaps Big Mac was on the mark about sort of just letting certain things go without detailed explanations. I would like to see some ideas of perhaps the few year jump would bring to Wildspace? Like does the Vodoni Empire really fall? Or perhaps the adventurers did loose or didn't necessarily break the back of the evil empire, but like Iuz, forced their hand to sign a truce.

There is no reason why you couldn't do that...

...but given the fact that it would involve writing fanon for every SJ product, I would suggest getting a "present day" conversion done first and making that into a follow up product.

That is true, jumping ahead I know. Popping off signatures based of naked dudes, converting things, looks like B. Stotch has got a full cup for the new year : ). Though now I'm curious what would you like to see in a present day fast forward? Like the Scro, I don't yet own Goblin's Return or Heart of the Enemy but I agree, by the time the 'present day' came about they should probably be outed? I also feel by present day I think we need to sort of get an idea of just who is in in-charge of the IEN, what planet they live on, or perhaps the Emperor governs from the moving space station Lionheart. It does seem that in Wildspace, especially an organization like the IEN the emperor might want to keep mobile to maintain control, especially how large the organization is.

BoddynockStotch wrote:That is true, jumping ahead I know. Popping off signatures based of naked dudes, converting things, looks like B. Stotch has got a full cup for the new year : ). Though now I'm curious what would you like to see in a present day fast forward? Like the Scro, I don't yet own Goblin's Return or Heart of the Enemy but I agree, by the time the 'present day' came about they should probably be outed? I also feel by present day I think we need to sort of get an idea of just who is in in-charge of the IEN, what planet they live on, or perhaps the Emperor governs from the moving space station Lionheart. It does seem that in Wildspace, especially an organization like the IEN the emperor might want to keep mobile to maintain control, especially how large the organization is.

I also find the Elven background incredibly frustrating. There must be an Emperor (or Empress). There must be an Empire. There must be a homeworld (for the Empire). It just is not possible for the elven navy to work in any other way.

I was originally attempting to scratch build an "elven homeworld", but after a lot of debating with other people (who made very good points), I decided that the homeworld really only needs to be the planet that "spacefaring elves" came from (rather than a point of origin for all elves).

However, most recently, I skimmed through PHBR8 The Complete Book of Elves and read what Colin McComb wrote about Spelljammer elves and what he wrote in the rest of the book.

I decided to use his canon (instead of my half-formed ideas) to create the homeworld. But then I changed my mind, and decided to make all six of the elf-based campaign settings he outlines instead. Each one of those campaign settings will be turned into a planet within a single crystal sphere. And one of those planets will be home of an elven nation that took to space and pulled many of the other nations in their home sphere into an empire similar (in some ways) to the one in Greatspace.

At the moment, I'm in the process of sifting through Colin McComb's concepts and sharing them out on a world-by-world basis, but when I have that done I want to hunt out the elf-related canon in the SJ products and try to make sure each loose end is tied into the crystal sphere I am making. There is definately a "hidden homeworld" aspect to the modern-day Elven Navy, so I think that needs to be explained. I've not really worked that one out yet, but perhaps Lionheart could have originally been based in the sphere and then destroyed* during an orc attack at the early stages of the First Unhuman War.

* = If the orcs actually took out the entire navy leadership, a lower officer could have quickly invented a lie that the "real leadership" was on a world elsewhere (and used that lie to prevent a collapse in morale). The lie could also have been made to prevent to orcs realising the strategic value of the planets in the rest of the crystal sphere (so could have been made to prevent a force arriving to destroy the Emperor's homeworld).

Anyway, that idea isn't fully formed, and needs to be compared against existing canon...something I can't do without a bit more research...and wikification.

Big Mac wrote:I also find the Elven background incredibly frustrating. There must be an Emperor (or Empress). There must be an Empire. There must be a homeworld (for the Empire). It just is not possible for the elven navy to work in any other way.

Polyhedron #81 has an adventure "In His Majesty's Spacial Service". This could mean that there is an Emperor. Unfortunately my quick skimming of the opening doesn't make this clear. It is unclear if they are referring to the elven empire in the sphere of the adventure or the empire behind the elven navy.

Big Mac wrote:I also find the Elven background incredibly frustrating. There must be an Emperor (or Empress). There must be an Empire. There must be a homeworld (for the Empire). It just is not possible for the elven navy to work in any other way.

Polyhedron #81 has an adventure "In His Majesty's Spacial Service". This could mean that there is an Emperor. Unfortunately my quick skimming of the opening doesn't make this clear. It is unclear if they are referring to the elven empire in the sphere of the adventure or the empire behind the elven navy.

Also, personally if this turns out to be some kind of net book. I feel that giff need a planet of their own. Either in our current day start a giff navel officer finally founded a sort of permanent HQ for the giff navy or they finally discovered their old home planet (I'm guessing some kind of jungle based world.) But I think they need a planet. I believe a few things we could agree on

Then again I think the first of the project this area should focus on is what each special interest group does.

For instance in this restart has much changed for the POTS? I figure the Pragmatic Order of Thought is a little more organized. Their leaders have exchanged ideas with groups like the Harpers and they've got a bit more expertise on freeing/safekeeping slaves on the run from the chainmen.

The Company of the Chalice: I recently read about this group, and to me, they kind of have a Knight's Templar feel to them. Holy crusades against the neogi, and all that. By current day the "Great Crusade" Is launched to purge the neogi without mercy.

Also had an idea for the calender known as E.R. (Emperor's Reckoning) to reflect the influence of the IEN, most civilized nations would adopt this calender (with the holdouts being their mortal enemies; like scro, neogi, or mindflayer.)

As we go further either in different netbooks we can focus on more specific spots. Like a netbook devoted to Vodoni (that I think would be one of the longer ones, I mean they have 12 spheres in their empire. That's even if there empire still stands by our update.)

BoddynockStotch wrote:Also, personally if this turns out to be some kind of net book. I feel that giff need a planet of their own. Either in our current day start a giff navel officer finally founded a sort of permanent HQ for the giff navy or they finally discovered their old home planet (I'm guessing some kind of jungle based world.) But I think they need a planet. I believe a few things we could agree on

The giff (and other new SJ races) definitely do need a homeworld, but IIRC* the canon says that they have "misplaced" their homeworld. Having a lost homeworld is OK, but you need to put in a backstory to back it up. Maybe the first giff in space were groundlings and got carted off to who knows where without paying attention to where they went.

* = I might be mixing them up with the dracons. This is part of the reason why I've put more effort into the wiki than this project. This sort of thing needs researching.

My best guess for the giff (and maybe the dracons) is that they come from beyond the Known Spheres on a groundling world with little to no contact with spacefarers. The transferred population would have needed to have been brought into the Known Spheres and then thrived and expanded far beyond the original population.

I don't especially think we need to fast-forward Spelljammer. The main thing we need to do is organise the canon into a much more logical form (i.e. you don't need to read about 6 sources before you realise that a + b + c = d). We also need to make a detailed assessment of what we do have and what is missing and then do something about the missing stuff.

I think the most amount of fast-forwarding I would ever want to do is moving forward to the Second Unhuman War (so the Scro were a known threat), but that would rob GMs of the ability to use some of the SJ adventures, so might not be a good idea tactically. I'd say this should be a secondary project goal.

I think the main goal here has to be to help Beyond the Moons to get the 3e conversion finished. In fact, fast forwarding the timeline is probably going to be something that is as useful for AD&D GMs (or C&C GMs), so it might be better to try to make that sort of project into someting "systemless".

But there is no reason why "half finished" things from the AD&D product line couldn't be fixed up in the context of the original AD&D timeline. So I would certainly like to see the origin of the giff get a better explanation.

BoddynockStotch wrote:Then again I think the first of the project this area should focus on is what each special interest group does.

True. There is some description of some of the groups in CGR1 The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook. But this is not universal. Worse than that, many of these groups are not tied down to specific locations.

I think that one of the problems with Spelljammer is actually The Rock of Bral. With it being billed as a location you could put anywhere, I think that many of the organisations from the original boxed set were intended to go there. That isn't such a bad thing - they should get representation on Bral. But we also need to have multiple secondary locations for the multi-sphere organisations. I don't think they need to be in all spheres, but I do think that all the AD&D Adventures in Space organisations need to be in Greyspace, Krynnspace and Realmspace.

BoddynockStotch wrote:For instance in this restart has much changed for the POTS? I figure the Pragmatic Order of Thought is a little more organized. Their leaders have exchanged ideas with groups like the Harpers and they've got a bit more expertise on freeing/safekeeping slaves on the run from the chainmen.

As I said above, I don't want to go for a reboot.

Making the Pragmatic Order of Thought work a bit better could certainly be a good thing (as could playing down the POTs thing). I think that the role of the Pragmatic Order of Thought (which really should be POoT**) should be to team up with whoever is in the local area. So if a few Harpers manage to make it into Realmspace, they should assist them. But the group is designed to be disorganised, and I'm not so sure that we should remove that. It might be better to use the disorganisation.

** = Not that that is any better.

So my question is: how can a lack of organisation be a good thing? Maybe if we stop thinking of them as a poorly organised anti-slavery organisation and thought of them as an organisation of freedom fighting cells, that might give them a more positive reason to be avoid organisation.

Think about it. They are up against all organisations that keep slaves. One of their major activities is to attack slave-ships and free slaves. With a 1,000 gp reward on the head of every member of The Order, they must have people try to infiltrate them on a regular basis. There must occasionally be spys hidden in slave ships and even if there are no professional spies the neogi and others are known to charm slaves and force them to do things against their will.

I say we should be treating the Pragmatic Order of Thought more like the French Resistance. Members should be captured or killed every so often and the organisation should be able to heal wounds in its structure, move vulnerable agents and get back to work.

BoddynockStotch wrote:The Company of the Chalice: I recently read about this group, and to me, they kind of have a Knight's Templar feel to them. Holy crusades against the neogi, and all that. By current day the "Great Crusade" Is launched to purge the neogi without mercy.

Actually, the boss of each sphere (the Grand Knight) is charged with "fighting the evil infidel". This may be the neogi in a lot of spheres, but not all of them. There will be some spheres where another race is seen as a greater threat and the Grand Knight decides to fight them instead. The way I read it, each sphere is supposed to be self-sufficient and The Company in one sphere will not interfere with the running of another sphere, the Grand Knight of one sphere decides that the Grand Knight of another sphere has become a cause of evil himself.

BoddynockStotch wrote:Also had an idea for the calender known as E.R. (Emperor's Reckoning) to reflect the influence of the IEN, most civilized nations would adopt this calender (with the holdouts being their mortal enemies; like scro, neogi, or mindflayer.)

Interesting concept. It does have the feel of a retcon, so I would be cautious about rolling it out to third party races. But it might be a good idea for the EIN to have its own calendar.

Emperor's Reckoning also sounds a bit like Dale Reckoning, so that might give people the subconscious impression that the empire comes from Toril. Maybe something that was not similar to DL, FR or GH might sound a bit better.

I'm currently trying to knock up the sphere with the EIN homeworld, and am trying to fit in with the "nobody knows the elven homeworld" thing, by having the EIN partially disassociate themselves with their own home planet. The concept I am shooting for, is that to protect the Emperor from attack during the First Unhuman War, they made their own planet seem far less strategically important than it really was.

I'm still working on the details, but moving Lionheart away from the EIN homeworld could be part of an attempt to make the homeworld fade into the background and just be one more elven world.

BoddynockStotch wrote:As we go further either in different netbooks we can focus on more specific spots. Like a netbook devoted to Vodoni (that I think would be one of the longer ones, I mean they have 12 spheres in their empire. That's even if there empire still stands by our update.)

This sort of thing is definately a great long term goal. I would love to see netbooks dealing with The Known Spheres and I would love to see other netbooks that show people how to take Spelljammer and apply it to a different area of wildspace. Not everyone wants to play in the crossover spheres and deal with Dragonlance, Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.

Collections of spheres like the Vodoni Empire could be a really great way to set up a self-contained SJ campaign that could be totally different from the sort of game you would get using the spheres from the AD&D Adventures in Space boxed set. It does need to be done.

Again I would love to see this happen, but it isn't strictly in the remit of the 3e project. I can see myself asking Ash for another SJ project space at some point.

I was hoping to get the 3e stuff done first, but maybe if there is interest in some things that would help players of all systems, that might get more input.